Manufacturing could be the bright spot in an otherwise dismal forecast for near-term economic growth, Patrick Barkey, the director of the Montana Bureau of Business and Economic Research, told about four-dozen people in Great Falls on Thursday morning at the Hilton Garden Inn.

They were gathered for the local presentation of the 2014 Economic Update by the Montana Chamber of Commerce.

Housing starts are soft and growth of jobs in the midpaying range are sluggish, Barkey said.

“And surprisingly, even though we’ve heard so much about rail congestion because of oil cars in the Bakken and coal shipments, earnings growth in transportation was lower in 2013 in Montana because of a slowdown in trucking,” he said.

In Montana, total nonfarm income grew by 2.2 percent in 2013, a lower growth rate than the two previous years. The forecast for wage growth in the state is 2.4 percent this year, 2.6 percent in 2015 and 3.1 percent in 2016.

However, lower energy prices and a stable domestic labor market suggest manufacturing will have a brighter outlook in the future than it did just four to five years ago, said Paul Polzin, director emeritus of the BBER.

“Offshore wages are starting to rise because of demand for labor, unionization and government regulations,” Polzin said.

Several Montana manufacturing businesses are well positioned for growth to meet equipment demands in the booming Bakken oil patches for oil and gas machines, pipe and pipeline fittings and measuring instruments, he said.

Manufacturing is strong nationwide, Barkey said, with new orders reaching $14.5 billion this year and manufacturing employment at the highest level since 2008.

“The number of people parked in (U.S.) manufacturing plant parking lots is at the highest rate since the 1970s when manufacturing employment started to decline and continued to do so except for a brief comeback in the 1990s and the comeback now,” Barkey told the audience.